


De re militari

by wigglebox



Series: Supernatural - Season 15 Coda Fics [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Gen, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-09 12:22:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20994728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wigglebox/pseuds/wigglebox
Summary: 15x01 Coda - the storm is just on the horizon and you can see it over the wall you built for yourself.





	De re militari

If you lose focus, even for a moment, you’re dead.

Some of the tangible monsters chasing you will be dumb; they’ll fall over each other and never think of the next step ahead but those monsters weren’t the issue -- those things you could just ignore or take out in one swing. 

The monsters that would take _you_ out in one swing need your direct attention. 

_Don’t think about anything, just do._

Don’t think about anything. Move your legs, move your arms, say what needs to be said, nothing more. You can’t allow that small seed of doubt, guilt, or fear begin to grow in your mind. When you do, that’s when you slip up and forget to turn a certain way or you hesitate for just a half-second too long. In that minuscule moment of time, when you’re not completely in line with your focus, whatever it is you’re fighting _is_ paying attention and will make the decision to strike -- something you failed to do. 

Keep moving and keep that wall protecting you high and thick with cement and barbed wire. Nothing gets in until you _let_ it in.. You have no contingency plan if anything outside managed to worm its way inside, so the best course of action is to assure yourself nothing ever will. 

All of that sounds good on paper, sounds good to yourself and even others when they ask why you’re quiet or calm, _I’m just focused on getting this done _\--

But none of it works when you’re driving to your next scheduled distraction, and when you look up in the rearview mirror you see the eyes of what you’re trying to keep out. They aren’t looking at you at first but in that fraction of time in which you stay a little too long, when you forget you’re supposed to be defending your keep, the eyes come back and look at you. 

Everything happens too fast and the emotions and words that have been slowly gathering into an army instead merge into a large battering ram. You look away, back to the road, as fast as you can but you still feel every radiating wave as they try to break what you so carefully crafted for yourself. 

The wave spreads from the middle of your chest to the tips of your fingers, a numbing sensation that eventually turns into an unpleasant tingling by the time it reaches your toes, almost like your foot fell asleep. It’s a harbinger of a forgotten storm on the horizon that you refuse to take shelter for because you’re convinced it won’t advance on your if you don’t look at it.

So, you look at little as possible in the rearview mirror as people talk around you. The eyes that stare back at you are hiding their own defense mechanism you think, but you don’t know what it is, and you’re too scared to find out. 

Something feels bad again, and that numbing sensation comes again, this time without warning. It’s the wrong kind of distraction, and all you want is to regain your focus so you don’t die the minute you step out of the car. The person you want to go to during all this is the person arming themselves up against you, and you against them. Ain’t that just a bitch of a situation.

After tuning the ambient the voices in the car out, and you go over a step by step process you had in place since you were a young child, you’re calmer and re-focused by the time you park. 

Something is still off, but you can’t think about it because if you lose focus, even for a moment, you’re dead.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to do a small character writing for the coda. It's not as long as I think it could have been, but also, the mess inside Dean's head right now, at least for me, is just too much of a tangled web to pick apart completely.
> 
> I loved the premiere, I love the tension, I love the frosty exchange, I love the pain and hurt because the resolution should be *chef's kiss*
> 
> I'm going to try and do as many coda fics as I can during this season. I'm going to assemble them into a series. 
> 
> Thank you for reading! As always if you see an error, please let me know politely in the comments! 
> 
> (not actually sure if this is second person pov or not but I used "you" and grade school memories tell me that it's a second person POV lol.).
> 
> Tumblr - Wigglebox


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